Amsterdam statue of Anne Frank defaced ‘for Gaza’
An antisemitic vandal painted “Gaza” on a statue of Anne Frank, located near the famed Holocaust diarist’s first home in Amsterdam, a local Jew-hatred watchdog said on Tuesday.
An antisemitic vandal defaced a statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam with graffiti reading “Gaza,” July 9, 2024. Credit: Courtesy of the Centre for Information and Documentation Israel.
“More ‘anti-Zionism,’” the Hague-based Centre for Information and Documentation Israel wrote on social media. “The statue of Anne Frank on the Merwede Square in Amsterdam, where the Jewish diarist lived until she went into hiding in 1942, has been defaced with red paint and the text ‘Gaza.’”
The watchdog added that a police report was filed.
Anne Frank, her older sister and their parents lived in an apartment at Merwede Square 37-2 after moving to the Dutch capital from Nazi Germany in 1938. They went into hiding four years later. The only video of the teenager was captured from outside this apartment on July 22, 1941.
Local bookseller Gert-Jan Jimmink, who initiated the monument some 20 years ago, told Amsterdam’s local AT5 news station that he previously urged the city to install cameras and street lighting.
The statue of Frank “represents the 14,000 Jews from this neighborhood who were murdered,” he told the news station. “It has nothing to do with current events.”
“These kind of statements are misplaced and disrespectful,” Bart Vink, the district’s chairman, told the news station. “We’ll have it removed as quickly as possible.”
Last month, the anti-Israel Palestine Action Amsterdam group vandalized a university building and several companies, alleged to have ties to the Jewish state, with red paint in protest of the war against Hamas terrorists.
In February 2023, a Polish-Canadian antisemite projected hateful messages on the façade of the Anne Frank House, an independent nonprofit in Amsterdam, including the conspiracy theory that she did not pen her diary.
“Anne Frank is the inventor of the ballpoint pen,” one message read in Dutch. It followed long-circulated claims among Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, which have now become an Internet meme.
Last year, the Center for Information and Documentation Israel recorded a 245% rise in antisemitic incidents compared to 2023.
While there was a sharp rise in the number of incidents following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, the total number of incidents before the massacre was already nearing the 2022 total, according to the CIDI.
“Jews in the Netherlands and the Jewish religion were often associated with the policies of the government in Israel, which caused Jews to become the target of antisemitic assaults,” the report stated.
Christian Zionist group targeted
Dutch police arrested a suspect after a Christian Zionist community center in Nijkerk was defaced by anti-Israel activists on July 7.
“Free Gaza” was painted in red on the pavement outside the front entrance, the glass doors were daubed with huge red “X” marks, and a picture apparently of a wounded Gazan father and daughter was posted on the windows along with papers with the printed message in Dutch: “occupied by colonists.”
The far left environmental group “Extinction Rebellion Nederland” claimed responsibility for the vandalism.
Christians for Israel said that they had surveillance video of the two perpetrators and Dutch police later arrested a 33-year-old woman from Arnhem on suspicion that she participated.
“As you often see with such actions, people act out of ignorance. This action is another example of that. If the activists knew what we stand for, they would not have carried out this action. We feel safe in our building where we now have our beautiful summer exhibition. The building is guarded and absolutely safe for visitors. And to reassure Extinction Rebellion, our building is completely climate neutral,” said Frank Van Oordt, director of Christians for Israel (C4I) in the Netherlands.
